THE BUZZ: Level-5′s beautiful PlayStation 3 RPG Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is coming to North America—and Namco Bandai has now given it a more specific release date.

EGM’s TAKE: First, a quick recap.

Ni no Kuni might not be a name you’re instantly familiar with, but when the game was first announced in Japan, it was a pretty big deal. The project came as a partnership between Level-5—one of the current darlings of the Japanese video game market—and Studio Ghibli, the renowned anime studio know for movies such as My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away.

Interestingly, this new RPG was announced for a somewhat strange combination of platforms: the PlayStation 3 and the Nintendo DS. The DS version was first to hit, and due to the vast amount of text that would need translation—in part due to an included “spellbook” that played as a companion to the game)—many believed it would never see Western release. That concern then transferred over to the PS3 version, which promised an expanded Ni no Kuni experience both storyline-wise and graphically.

In October of last month, Namco Bandai announced that it would be coming to our shores in 2012—at some unknown point in 2012. Today, Destructoid got word from the publisher that the game will be coming to us in “winter 2012″.

So, basically, the end of the year—but hey, at least we now know better when to expect it!

Source: Destructoid